Staten Island Man Is Charged In Home Storage of Chemicals

By MAUREEN SEABERG

Published: June 30, 2007

A Staten Island man with a conviction for wire fraud was charged yesterday with reckless endangerment after law enforcement authorities found more than 2,000 pounds of chemicals in his home and in a nearby storage locker during a nighttime raid, officials said.

The man, Miguel Serrano, 57, pleaded not guilty to the felony charge at his arraignment in Staten Island Criminal Court yesterday and was ordered held on $250,000 bail.

The authorities said he had been buying the chemicals from wholesalers in bulk and reselling them on eBay. The chemicals included potassium nitrate, sulfur, hydrogen peroxide and mercury.

The authorities also disclosed that Mr. Serrano had served time in a federal prison in Danbury, Conn., in connection with a 1980s scheme to defraud the Home Federal Savings and Loan Association of Puerto Rico, which subsequently collapsed.

Acting on a tip from an Ohio chemical dealer, city police officers and chemists, along with agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, swarmed Mr. Serrano's home at 199 Ada Drive in Graniteville, Staten Island, on Thursday night and evacuated surrounding homes as a safety precaution. Some of the chemicals, including potassium nitrate and sulfur, can be used to make explosives.

Although the police said there was no evidence of bomb-making or terrorist activity at the home, Daniel M. Donovan Jr., the Staten Island district attorney, defended the raid. ''As we learned from the Oklahoma City bombing,'' Mr. Donovan said in a statement yesterday, ''many chemicals that have innocuous household uses can often be combined to create powerful explosives when in the wrong hands.''

A lawyer for Mr. Serrano, Joseph Tacopina, ridiculed that argument, pointing out that even Home Depot stocks fertilizer containing potassium nitrate.

''They might as well arrest all the Home Depot employees, too,'' Mr. Tacopina said in a telephone interview. ''The law for a Class D felony requires 'grave risk of death' -- death! What was someone going to get? A rash? This whole thing should have been dismissed.''

At the arraignment, another defense lawyer, Brian King, said the endangerment charge was baseless because the amount of chemicals stored in the home -- about 375 pounds, according to the authorities -- was ''minuscule.'' He accused the authorities of filing the charge in response to broad media coverage of the raid.

''They've charged a D felony because this got a lot of media attention,'' Mr. King said.

A prosecutor, John Waszak, argued that the chemicals were being taken seriously because they were not in a safe place. ''This was a residential neighborhood,'' he said.

Mr. Serrano's wife, Maritza Serrano; their sons, Billy and Chris; and a family friend attended the court hearing.

In the courtroom lobby, a worried Mrs. Serrano said her husband was a pastor. ''He runs Hands of Hope Church here on Staten Island,'' she said. There is no listing for the church on the Internet or in local telephone directories.

A church official on Staten Island who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Mr. Serrano was not ordained, and had been fired from his job as a math teacher at New Dorp Baptist Church when his previous conviction for fraud came to light.

Mr. King said Mr. Serrano used the chemicals to teach science to underprivileged children in his ministry.

''Is he a licensed chemist?'' Judge Desmond Green asked.

''No, sir,'' Mr. Serrano said.

Besides the chemicals found in the home, investigators discovered 350 pounds of sulfur and 1,470 pounds of potassium nitrate in the nearby storage facility, on Goethals Road North.

Potassium nitrate, also known as saltpeter, has a variety of commercial uses, including as fertilizer, as a solvent for cleaning septic tanks, as a meat preservative and in making gunpowder. The chemicals were taken to the Police Department bomb squad facility at Rodman's Neck in the Bronx, officials said.

The police said it was unclear how long Mr. Serrano had been buying the chemicals.

Photos: Miguel Serrano, 57, right, on the way to his arraignment on reckless endangerment charge. The police found chemicals in his home, center at left. (Photographs by Mary DiBiase Blaich for The New York Times)